Meter Wide Jellyfish Species in California Waters

A bizarre new species of jellyfish has been discovered in the deep waters off the Californian coast

The bell-shaped creature spans a metre in diameter and has been nicknamed “big red”, because of its unusual deep red colour. The US and Japanese teams that discovered it say the species deserves its own subfamily.

Tiburonia granrojo was discovered using video cameras on deep-diving remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). Its colour and shape set it apart from its other gelatinous relatives, but it has another unusual characteristic — a complete lack of tentacles.

Instead, the jelly has four to seven fleshy arms that it uses to capture food. While jellyfish species normally can be distinguished by the number of tentacles they have, the number of arms differs between individual big reds.

Positive Change via Positive NewsThis site brings together just a few of the thousands of new species discovered since the year 2000.
Hopefully, it will inspire us to see the world as a place still being explored, and give us the courage to conserve and protect the fragile, shrinking areas of habitat left on Earth...
areas which, as we see here, contain creatures we haven't even yet Imagined...